Federal Court Upholds Games

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit today overturned a St. Louis County Ordinance seeking to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors. The case, filed by the IDSA (The Interactive Digital Software Association) and several other groups, supports the principle that videogames are a constitutionally protected form of expression, and that the government cannot legally enact laws regulating the sale of violent video games to minors. The Federal Court agreed.

"This decision is a total and unambiguous affirmation of our position that videogames have the same constitutional status as a painting, a film, or a book," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the IDSA. "The decision sends a powerful signal to government at all levels that efforts to regulate consumers' access to the creative and expressive content found in video games will not be tolerated."

Three major findings were used to support the decision: The court concluded that games, regardless of their content, are constitutionally protected speech. "If the first amendment is versatile enough to 'shield [the] painting of Jackson Pollack, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll,' Hurley, 515 U.S. at 569, we see no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories and narrative present in video games are not entitled to similar protection."

Second, the Court found that the County had utterly failed to establish that there is a compelling state interest in regulating the sale of games to minors on behalf of parents.

"We do not mean to denigrate the government's role in supporting parents, or the right of parents to control their children's exposure to graphically violent materials. We merely hold that the government cannot silence protected speech by wrapping itself in the cloak of parental authority&#Array;To accept the County's broadly-drawn interest as a compelling one would be to invite legislatures to undermine the first amendment rights of minors willy-nilly under the guise of promoting parental authority."

Third, the Court dismissed the County's claim that violent videogames need to be regulated because they're harmful to minors. The Court found the county's evidence, which it called "...a small number of ambiguous, inconclusive, or irrelevant (conducted on adults not minors) studies; and the testimony of a high school principal who admittedly had no information regarding any link between violent video games and psychological harm," to be unpersuasive. "The County's conclusion that there is a strong likelihood that minors who play violent video games will suffer a deleterious effect on their psychological health is completely unsupported in the record."

"We hope that this ruling, coupled with a similar ruling by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving an Indianapolis law seeking to restrict the display of violent video arcade games, will give pause to those who would use the power of the state to regulate speech they find objectionable," Lowenstein added.

We'll have more on the turbulent nature of videogames and their affect on humans in the near future.